More comprehensive digital transformation could improve both the quality and efficiency of public services. To achieve this, the government needs to update its cloud policy and take a holistic approach that looks beyond procurement, writes Chris Hazell from techUK

Since its launch in 2013, the Cloud First Policy has been a flagship technology initiative for government and significant progress has been made towards digital transformation of the public sector, with the help of procurement frameworks such as G-Cloud and joint ventures like Crown Hosting.

However, older legacy IT remains a source of inefficiency across the public sector and more comprehensive digital transformation could deliver more innovative public services and better outcomes for citizens. To achieve this, the government needs to update its cloud policy and take a holistic approach that looks beyond procurement to how a truly modern data-driven civil service should operate.

Amidst a challenging fiscal environment, the Chancellor’s Autumn Budget included a two per cent productivity, efficiency and savings target for government departments, with technology expected to do much of the heavy lifting in bridging the gap between cutting costs and improving public services.

Consequently, the Spending Review in early 2025 will have a key focus on accelerating “digital adoption in the public sector by addressing legacy IT and utilising cloud services and data sharing.” This is the right ambition.

Digital transformation does offer many opportunities for innovation, and a thriving ecosystem of tools and services has emerged in recent years to help organisations leverage cloud computing, data analytics and AI to work in more agile, dynamic and efficient ways. Harnessing these capabilities successfully will be crucial for the public sector if it is to improve both the quality and efficiency of public services.

So, with technology expected to play a key role in the Spending Review, what is missing from the Cloud First Policy?

Digital transformation is about more than procurement

Building an organisational culture of innovative and agile working practices is a key pillar of successful cloud modernisation. A streamlined and effective procurement system is essential to accelerating digital transformation, but the public sector would also benefit from thinking about digital transformation as a process of workforce development and outcome-driven reform.

Getting maximum value from cloud computing, in terms of both efficiency savings and delivering better outcomes, requires a shift in culture and working practices that empowers the civil service with new tools and a more agile and data-driven approach to service delivery.

This means both redoubling efforts to build skills and digital awareness and taking a holistic view of how the organisation is using technology and adapting processes to the opportunities offered by cloud services and emerging technologies like AI.

In short, digital transformation would be more effective if the business case was built on modernisation of people and process, beyond simply infrastructure procurement. To use cloud effectively, the public sector needs both data-driven tools and a data-driven culture.

Sustainability

The Cloud First Policy, and its associated guidance, contain no mention of sustainability or energy-efficiency, despite sustainable growth being a clearly expressed priority for every government since the policy was launched. techUK would like to see this revised to include sustainability in the list of “Government Cloud Principles”.

An update to the policy would benefit from promoting GreenOps practices by building on the FinOps discipline to put resource efficiency at the core of every government department’s cloud strategy. This should include a focus on tackling the dark data challenge within government by revising and monitoring data management policies to minimise the storage of unused data in cloud environments, an adoption of green software principles and the modernisation of legacy software.

Including sustainability as a key metric for public sector cloud modernisation would not only help mitigate the impact of digital transformation on net-zero, but save money in the long-term by taking a leaner, more efficient approach to public sector IT.

Cloud modernisation, not cloud migration

It is well established that a “lift and shift” approach to cloud adoption that simply re-hosts your legacy applications and data on cloud infrastructure is unlikely to result in significant efficiency gains or innovative new approaches to service delivery.

This is acknowledged in the Cloud First Policy, which encourages organisations to consider application modernisation and cloud native solutions such as containerisation, microservices and serverless computing. Unfortunately, once an organisation has moved to cloud and an initial procurement exercise has completed, it can be tempting to think “job done” and lose sight of the need for a culture of continuous modernisation even within cloud environments.

This is a fast-moving area of technology development and many public sector organisations that were early adopters of cloud may already be behind the curve of adopting the latest tools and best practice.

A revised cloud policy would benefit from new guidance for public sector organisations considering how to leverage cloud-native approaches to improve efficiency, resilience and the delivery of public services. As departments review their use of technology for the Spending Review, a key consideration should be where existing use of cloud can be modernised and where processes can be streamlined with a cloud-native approach.

Cross-government data sharing

Both the National Data Strategy and the Data Sharing Governance Framework produced under the last government recognised the need for better data sharing to deliver public services and improve outcomes for businesses and people. This was reiterated in the announcement of Spending Review 2025.

However, the current cloud first policy is still focused on procurement silos and not improving interoperability and data portability between departments and across the wider public sector. Cross-functional collaboration to deliver efficiency savings and cut costs is obviously a good thing, providing it does not compromise service delivery, but the focus should be on outcomes for citizens.

An update to the cloud policy should include a review of the technical challenges for data sharing, identify non-technical barriers across the public sector, and suggest strategies for how successful cloud modernisation can facilitate smarter use of data not just within departments but on a cross-government basis.

A new cloud policy for a new era of government

It has been more than a decade since the cloud first policy was developed, and while it was reviewed in 2019 and declared “here to stay”, it should be updated to reflect a more outcome-driven approach to government that sees digital transformation primarily as a means to empower civil servants and reform outdated processes.

While good procurement guidance is essential to deliver value for money to the taxpayer, the government’s flagship cloud policy should be oriented first and foremost towards modernising services and achieving better outcomes. This means a clear focus on people, processes, and outcome-driven use of data across the public sector.

The creation of a new hub in DSIT, bringing together GDS, CDDO and the Incubator for AI to “drive forward the digital changes needed to overhaul the British public’s experience of interacting with the government” could be positive step in this direction and a review of the cloud policy should be on their to do list.

As we look towards 2025 and the Spending Review, techUK will be working with our industry members to think about how this can be achieved. If you are interested in that work, please get in touch.